Wick Morgan is owner, creator, designer and operator of The Spectacle, North Carolina’s artfully designed luxury eyewear shop. Located in the The Shoppes at North Hills in Raleigh, The Spectacle offers eyewear to fit any lifestyle, the very best lens technology, a fabulously diverse and intriguing collection of fashion forward eyewear, and a perfect environment for making sure every client that comes in gets the very best personal care.
Wick has more than 30 years of optical and fashion experience and has worked with some of the most talented and influential eyewear designers in the world. He broke into the business at age 16 when he started selling sunglasses in Stowe, Vermont. His opportunities greatly expanded when he met Larry Sands, whom essentially pioneered the high-end optical industry in America when he opened The Optical Shop of Aspen in Colorado in 1970. Sands expanded his concept of luxury optical to locations in Los Angeles, Scottsdale, Arizona, Santé Fe, New Mexico, and Newport Beach, California, where Wick began working for Sands after a chance meeting on Catalina Island.
At age 29, Wick moved to Manhattan in order to launch the Luxury Lifestyle brand of Kieselstein-Cord Eyewear. Wick jokes, "Those five years in New York were truly my graduate school for fashion." The assignment blended his ability to “Preach, praise and sell” the concept of luxury eyewear. Wick was once again asked to return to California by Sands in order to launch the Chrome Hearts Eyewear collection, a luxury lifestyle brand catering to the celebrity and rock ‘n’ roll elite that call Los Angeles home. Chrome Hearts proved to be one of the most influential eyewear collections ever created, forever raising the bar on what could be conceived and constructed in the fashion eyewear community. It is that concept of "Raising the Bar" that Wick wants every customer to feel when shopping at The Spectacle.
What drew Wick to Raleigh was his son, Mason Hunter, who resided in the city with his mother. Commuting every eight days from Malibu, California for a year to be with Mason, Wick grew weary of not having enough time to spend with him, so he decided to sell everything, resign a 13-year career and open his own upscale eyewear shop in North Carolina’s capital city. Wick sought the services of an experienced assistant and he discovered Gregor Owen, a licensed optician from Florida, who had volumes of experience in the latest lens technology. The two men clicked and Wick opened The Spectacle at North Hills in April 2008.
Wick says it is an amazing mix of customers who visit his shop, with clients of all ages spending anywhere from $110 to $2,000 on eyewear. He asserts that a person’s eyeglasses must work around their lifestyle, and never the other way around. Eyewear should be aesthetically pleasing as well as functional. Wick knows that friends and family will be brutally honest in their opinion on someone’s new glasses. And in order to make that opinion a favorable one, frames must be scrutinized down to smallest detail. "I suffer from brutal honesty when it comes to eyewear," says Wick. "Whether it’s a millimeter in the wrong place, or just the incorrect shade of color, you’ll know about it in my shop. Liking your glasses isn’t good enough, you need to love them. I believe glasses are more than a necessity – they are an accessory, and it happens to be the one accessory that everyone sees. His former mentor Sands remains one of Wick’s inspirations, forever questioning "Is it as good as it can be?"
Born and raised in Vermont, Wick now resides in Wake County. His main hobby is his family, whose company he enjoys keeping as much as possible.